Seeing Dangerous Men
Seeing Dangerous Men Takes A Developed Analysis Mr Mark Walters, Associate Lecturer
Queensland Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Research
When confronted by the actions of Rowan Baxter in the past weeks I was hoping that the service system, that I work in and contribute to, hadn’t failed in containing him and left Hannah and her children vulnerable. As awful as it sounds now, part of me hoped that he was unknown or invisible, as some of the perpetrators of this awful type of violence occasionally are. But that wasn’t the case. He and his actions, particularly after they separated, had become known to the system and orders were in place. Interventions and referrals were made that ultimately hadn’t been able to contain Rowan Baxter. There has been the legitimate commentary on the challenges of containing violent men and their propensity to find a way, if they are really motivated, to kill. But as someone invested in building the sector’s capacity to recognise and respond to domestic violence, I can see the hallmarks of a skilful manipulator. I can see his strategic efforts to conceal his behaviours and his ultimate intent. In a robust and critical analysis of ‘what went wrong?’ we would need to see that at certain points of the system response, his dangerous potential was not seen and maybe not understood. 05 . QCDFVRe@der, Autumn 2020
Kidnapping your eldest child and taking her out of the state is not the act of a caring, kind dad acting out of grief but more of a dangerous man intent on inflicting maximum distress on the partner that dared to want something better, a partner, who dared to leave. Professionals, particularly within the legal spaces, have pointed out the dire consequence of losing sight of the potential for dangerousness. We lose sight when dangerous men’s threats and tactics of intimidation can be framed or interpreted as legitimate responses to the suffering of separation from children. We lose sight when we fail to challenge a separated father about his language, threats and his adversarial tactics. As a member of the Queensland Domestic Violence Death Review and Advisory Board, I reviewed cases where it seemed apparent that, in some parts of the service system, suffering can have the effect of dulling or blurring the safety system’s ‘senses’. This, at its worst, misinterprets and then excuses those expressions of hostility, revenge or hate, seeing them instead as grief and loss responses. This misinterpretation is a serious practice, and a safety problem. Much as we may hate to admit it, neglecting to see those threats, failing to respond to those expressions, minimising and excusing the impact on their separated partner, is collusion.
